The Pacific ocean is closing up - and the new supercontinent will be 'Amasia'
In the future, America and Asia will collide - forming a new supercontinent called Amasia, as the Pacific Ocean closes up.
If you have any Pacific beach breaks planned, don’t panic - it’s likely to happen in 200 to 300 million years time.
The Pacific Ocean currently shrinking in size by a few centimetres per year - and began to shrink during the time of the dinosaurs.
Researchers from Curtin University used a supercomputer to simulate how a supercontinent forms.
Earth previously had a ‘supercontinent’ called Pangaea, which is thought to have broken apart about 175 million years ago.
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They found that because the Earth has been cooling for billions of years, the thickness and strength of the plates under the oceans reduce with time, making it difficult for the next supercontinent to assemble by closing the "young" oceans, such as the Atlantic or Indian oceans.
Lead author Dr. Chuan Huang, from Curtin's Earth Dynamics Research Group said,
"Over the past 2 billion years, Earth's continents have collided together to form a supercontinent every 600 million years, known as the supercontinent cycle. This means that the current continents are due to come together again in a couple of hundred of million years' time.
Watch: History of Earth's supercontinent Pangaea
"The resulting new supercontinent has already been named Amasia because some believe that the Pacific Ocean will close (as opposed to the Atlantic and Indian oceans) when America collides with Asia. Australia is also expected to play a role in this important Earth event, first colliding with Asia and then connecting America and Asia once the Pacific Ocean closes.
"By simulating how the Earth's tectonic plates are expected to evolve using a supercomputer, we were able to show that in less than 300 million years' time it is likely to be the Pacific Ocean that will close, allowing for the formation of Amasia, debunking some previous scientific theories."
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The Pacific Ocean is what is left of the Panthalassa superocean that started to form 700 million years ago when the previous supercontinent started to break apart.
It is the oldest ocean we have on Earth, and it started shrinking from its maximum size since the era of the dinosaurs.
Co-author Professor Zheng-Xiang Li, also from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said that having the whole world dominated by a single continental mass would dramatically alter Earth's ecosystem and environment.
Professor Li said, "Earth as we know it will be drastically different when Amasia forms. The sea level is expected to be lower, and the vast interior of the supercontinent will be very arid with high daily temperature ranges.”
"Currently, Earth consists of seven continents with widely different ecosystems and human cultures, so it would be fascinating to think what the world might look like in 200 to 300 million years' time."
